Rumor: Xbox 720 to Have 'Ridiculously Powerful' 16-Core CPU

Microsoft has been pretty adamant that it won't be bringing the Xbox 720 to E3 2012 but the gossip and rumors about the console rage on regardless. Today's outlandish rumor comes courtesy of Xbox World, which is reporting that the new Xbox will have a 16-core CPU.

The report says that Durango developer kits were sent out last month and while they don't resemble the finished product as far as appearance is concerned, the guts of these kits is representative of the console that is expected next year. We had already heard that the new Xbox 720, codenamed Durango, would pack something along the lines of AMD's Radeon 7000-series in terms of graphics, and XBW is reporting the same, along with a 16-core IBM Power PC CPU.

"It's a ridiculous amount of power for a games machine - too much power, even," the reports states. "But remember, Kinect 2 could chew up four whole cores tracking multiple players right down to their fingertips, so it'll need a lot of power."

As usual, Microsoft hasn't commented on the rumors, preferring instead to stay quiet and let these reports stew away. Still, on the off chance they do comment, we'll be sure to keep you posted.

Actually 12 cores CPU's have been going for a while now: http://blogs.amd.com/work/2010/03/28/welcome-to-the-world-of-12-cores/That post about their first 12 core CPU was back in 2010. There's no reason for a home user to have that many cores, and it's really expensive, which is why it's in the background, because only businesses need to know. By the time the X720 (or whatever) gets released, it might be more affordable, though I seriously doubt it'd be 16 cores. There's no actual benefit to having 16cores for a console at the moment, or even the near future (Next 5 years+). That talk about thing about Kinect, even if it's true that it takes an entire core for one person (Which is incredibly insane and very inefficient), by the time it gets released it'd make sense that their level of efficiency with the device and programming would've reached a new level, requiring less for more. If they don't, then they arn't doing their jobs right.

lol 16 cores. who dreams this stuff up... oh yeah the microsoft fanboi...there gonna put in a gfx card thats only just better than the current consoles yet these idiots wanna cram a 16 core cpu in and keep it under 299 bux... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,,,,hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,,,,hahahhaurggggghhhh me heart....

jrtolsonstill have crap games like call of duty 28? more lame (not as good as hl2//counterstrike) fps games?thing is they will not utilize 16 cores, and i seriously think 16 cores is overkill for a games console..

If the Dev's where gave 16 cores they'd use more of them over time and the games would progressively get better Physics and AI I think. I'm not sure they would put 16 cores in though. How would they deal with the heat coming off that?

sorry m8 theres just no way they need 16 cores to run a game... yeas you can add physics and other little tweaks but at the most your looking at 6-8 threads because games just dont need any more. i bet bill gates is even laughing at this rumor...

Doesn't the PS3 have a similar processor? It's got 1-2 actual processor cores, with a bunch of less powerful psuedo-CPU cores, IIRC.

Meh. If it really is going to have 16 cores, it's going to be a right bitch to program for. I don't see why we just can't have a really good single core CPU rather than a crummy CPU with a gajillion cores. Would keep costs way down and programming made much easier.

@MajinCry The Reason they have to make more cores is because they have reached the limit at which the processor run at, Silicon can only move so fast, so instead of trying to make faster single cores they are making the fast cores smaller and putting them together

Yes indeed.Efficiency however, is also important. Superservers of today require so much power that they're becoming unrealistic. They also generate so much heat, that the costs for cooling are through the roof. You can overclock if you've got the cooling, but then you risk burning it out sooner than it's original lifespan.

We can now see the end of the road for Silicon. It may be a while before we reach it, but it's certainly on the horizon. Research has been pooled into alternatives for quite some time now, and the thought was that we'd get Genetic based computers (DNA) as the next step. However from what the research that's been done suggests, although it might come before pure optical (light) based computers, it doesn't look like it's going to beat the best of them all in time (Quantum based). I now direct you to IBM's webpage direct from one of their servers that talks about how they've managed to achieve Quantum based error correction and what it means: Ibm.com

Quantum computing, eh? Wonder if those compies will be compatible with today's OS' and programs.

Will be if you make it a hybrid, and I now refer you to the first ever commercial Quantum Computer (Though the Quantum part of it is quite limit to what it can do, it's mainly for mathmatical reasons which would take our current systems decades or centuries to figure out, which it can do in a matter of hours or days). It's called the Dwave One System: Take a look here!

But yeah if you want to take full advantage, a new method of encryption would have to be developed since Quantum is too powerful for current methods (It'd figure out any encryption in a matter of minutes or hours), and obviously a new OS and programming routines, since the baseline for programming would no longer be Binary (Limited to 0 (off) and 1 (on), but now a state of non-existance (0), existance (1), and both non-existance and existance at the same time (2)). The 3rd state opens up whole new world in terms of programming.

sorry m8 theres just no way they need 16 cores to run a game... yeas you can add physics and other little tweaks but at the most your looking at 6-8 threads because games just dont need any more. i bet bill gates is even laughing at this rumor...

btw my earlier post was sarcasm and not literal...

The Xbox 1 to 360 went from 1 CPU thread to 6. So surely (With the next generation having the potential to be even longer and using advanced things like kinect 2.0 body tracking for multiple people.) 16 threads/cores might be used. I doubt MS would put 16 cores in though.